Trailer Trash
by HowWonderfulLifeIs
Summary: A series of occasions on which fools made Shawn Hunter feel inferior. Rated based on content to come.
1. Not For a Little Boy's Ears

The hated name first pinched his ears when, at the age of five, he fell in love with his teacher and her pretty red hair and the extra cookie she gave him at snack-time each day. Some days, Ms. O'Hara would share her lunch with him as well, and little Shawn Hunter's baby lips would stretch across his whole face with the smile of someone who knew his good fortune. He would thank her, and promptly devour whatever was placed in front of him. At the time, he did not understand that when Ms. O'Hara watched him eat with that sad crease between her brows that she pitied him; he only knew that he loved this nice lady who taught him letters and numbers and fed him when he was hungry. He loved to look at her hair, which little Shawn imagined was soft and fine like the hair of a fairy, one of the beautiful creatures that inhabited the pages of the books that Ms. O'Hara would read to her students on frigid winter afternoons when it was too cold for her to send the children out to recess. Unfortunately, Ms. O'Hara was as much a fairy tale as any of the characters that enchanted Shawn, something for a poor boy to dream of.

There are some things said that are not meant for the ears of little boys, and had Maggie O'Hara known that Shawn Hunter was the last boy to get his jacket from his cubby on a Friday afternoon, she would have waited patiently to make her phone call to Chet Hunter. She would have given her sweet little boy a hug, helped him slip on the little jacket that she had stolen for him from the lost and found, held his hand as he walked to the front of school to board the bus, and waved goodbye to him as the bus pulled away. On this particular afternoon, however, Maggie had different priorities; she was irate, utterly inflamed, seeing so much red that it blotted out her better judgement as she said through gritted teeth, "Hello, this is Margaret O'Hara from Hillside elementary, I'm Shawn's teacher. Is Mr. Hunter home?"

He was.

"May I speak with him?"

Yes, of course she may. If she would just wait a moment… CHET! Shawn's teacher was on the telephone, hopefully he wasn't in trouble...

The conversation opened with the typical pleasantries, inquiries as to whether or not Shawn was in trouble, and an awkward moment of silence as Maggie attempted to phrase her sentiments kindly.

"Mr. Hunter, I understand that parenting can be difficult, especially when one also works, and I understand that you also have difficulty keeping a position, but you must know that your lifestyle could harm your son."

"Beg your pardon?" Chet Hunter interjected, somewhat taken aback. Maggie inhaled deeply, trying to contain her emotions; she began well enough, but as her speech went on, the less she found she could control herself.

"Shawn is a very bright boy, he has a wonderful imagination and a good deal of energy, and I love having him in my class. However, he's begun to act out in class recently, and it started with stealing food from other children at snack-time because he didn't have any breakfast. In other words, your financial state and inability to effectively care for your child's needs have hindered his social development, Mr. Hunter, and the worst of it was seeing him come into class without a coat when it was twenty-seven degrees in December! That coat he comes home in, I gave him that! Why is it that I care more for your child's well-being than you seem to, Mr. Hunter, why is that? Only a piece of trailer trash would have so little concern for his child!"

Shawn stood in the cubbies, frozen. His fairy princess was shouting at his father, and he did not understand what she was saying, but it scared him.

"I would call Child Services if I thought they'd be better for him," Maggie fumed, "but I've heard some terrible stories. Please, think about what's best for your son, or let someone better equipped do it for you!"

At that last word, Shawn came bolting out from his cubby, blubbering with confusion and worry, shrieking in a little boy's high-pitched whine, "Don't talk to my Daddy that way!"

Maggie O'Hara, staring down at the the tiny boy staining her trousers with tears as he clung to her legs, felt an overwhelming surge of guilt and embarrassment. Through the receiver she could hear Chet Hunter shouting something obscene in retaliation, but she hung up to bend down and hug Shawn, soon letting some tears escape onto his little shoulder. When she pulled back to look him in the eye, the boy would not look at her. Without another word, she led him to the bus. He did not look back to see her wave goodbye.


	2. Playing at War

Shawn had never been one for playing at war; usually the war just came to him, with what felt like an entire army of classmates waiting for him fall. The guidance counselors at each elementary school he attended had jokingly remarked to their colleagues that the average amount of enemies that a small boy could make at school had grown significantly larger since the Hunter boy had entered the school system. He could not have known that he was the subject of water-cooler conversations, the punchline of gentle jokes tossed between adults who no longer had to brave the lunch line each day at 11:30. Thank heaven he never heard, thank heaven that salt never touched his wounds, poor little elementary school soldier who could not find an infirmary that would treat the injuries dealt by boys with money as their weapon.

Years later, Shawn would write those lines in a notebook he would let no one read from, in a poem that was his story and no one else's, not even Cory's. He remembered nine years old, too-large hand-me-down shirts from his father that swallowed his tiny little-boy-bones, crinkling empty chip bags at the bottom of his backpack that were incriminating evidence of hunger, and orange vouchers that were universal symbols of not being able to pay for his own damned lunch. Nine-year-old Shawn stood small in the lunch line, hoping for invisibility as other children filed in behind him; unfortunately, he was never very good at fading into his surroundings, and the bullies always found him in the end.

"Trailer Boy," a bigger boy would greet him after he collected his tray, "like my old man always says, 'Whoever heard of a free lunch?'"

The first day, Shawn spoke up in a loud voice, telling them exactly where they could go, but his little rebellion did not last through the third day. Through threats and beatings that the lunch monitors either didn't see or didn't care to stop, he learned to stop resisting when the boys dragged his tray from his hands and dumped his government-given lunch into the nearest trash can. He continued standing small, trying very hard not to take up more space than a trailer kid deserved, and soon he found that his best option was not to enter the cafeteria at all. If he wasn't there, he couldn't be singled out and stripped of his pride; he did not pause to think he might be losing worse, until an unusually hot night in early spring led him to sleep without a shirt, and his mother shrieked with panic when she realized that she could see every one of his ribs poking through his skin. She wept as she forced him to produce his unused lunch vouchers, and soon had the truth from him about his starvation. Soon after a discussion with the school's principal, she and her husband assured their son that the boys who had tried to break him would leave him be. Shawn did not bother to tell them that they were fools for thinking their words would change anything. As he regained the flesh between his ribs, he made sure he never slept shirtless again, for fear that his mother would discover the bruises delivered by fists also hoping to fill the space. There was no such thing as a free lunch.


End file.
